%0 Journal Article
%T Criteria of validity for animal models of psychiatric disorders: focus on anxiety disorders and depression
%A Catherine Belzung
%A Ma£żl Lemoine
%J Biology of Mood & Anxiety Disorders
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2045-5380-1-9
%X In recent years, the translational approach, which aims at bridging the gaps between basic animal research and medical practice, has gained much popularity. This concept, although not new in medicine, became popular with its introduction in the National Institutes of Health Roadmap initiative [1,2]. It applies also to the field of psychiatry, and particularly to the one of affective disorders, a nosographical entity including depression and anxiety disorders. In the framework of translational medicine, a robust approach should include both research going from the bench to the bedside (from animals to humans, or from basic to clinical research) but also 'back translation research' (from humans to animals). Most efforts have been devoted to the former, focusing on the design of animal models (particularly using rodents) that would be relevant to study the human disorder and to predict the therapeutic outcomes of future treatments. Unfortunately, little research follows the opposite direction, using the back-translational approach and thus going from the bedside to the bench. However, this method is crucial when trying to assess the function of some mechanisms discovered in animal models in the pathophysiology of human disorders and when trying to discover new treatments for these conditions. For example, the contribution of hippocampal neurogenesis in the pathophysiology of depression and in the therapeutic efficacy of pharmacological treatments has been shown using rodent models [3-6], and then confirmed in human studies [7,8]. In any case, these approaches require that these rodent models are suitable to study the clinical condition.Two opposite attitudes exist. The first is one of skepticism: animal models already have limited interest even in the case of diseases affecting largely shared physiological systems among mammals. How could they be reliable in the case of largely specific features of the human species, such as diseases involving mostly disorders of the h
%U http://www.biolmoodanxietydisord.com/content/1/1/9